Exporting Lightning Calendar Data

In my effort to find a stand-alone desktop calendar, I exported my Thunderbird Lightning data as an *.ics file. Exporting in a common format should help with migrating the data to another tool.

Browsing the exported file showed each event contained an error and a generic, useless description field. The error looked like this:

X-LIC-ERROR;X-LIC-ERRORTYPE=PARAMETER-VALUE-PARSE-ERROR:Got a VALUE parameter with an illegal type for property: VALUE=DURATION

Each related “value”: TRIGGER;VALUE=DURATION:PT0S.

The useless description field:

DESCRIPTION:Default Mozilla Description

My presumption is the original calendar data is mangled or the export tool does not not correctly handle the data. Possibly I am not configuring Lightning data correctly. Every event but one contained this error. Curiously, that event was not a recurring event.

When I edited that sole event to be recurring then the same errors appeared in a new exported file.

In a migration effort, removing the useless description field is a straightforward exercise with sed. I do not know how the error message will affect migrating the data. I will have to wait until that day to test further.

With software something is always broken.

Posted: July 11, 2021 Category: Usability Tagged: General, Thunderbird

Next: Avoiding Ransomware

Previous: Disaster Recovery Testing — 2